e of the ancient inhabitants tells her of the death of her lover,
and, like the Breton mother, she casts herself on the body of him she
has lost.

"This passage," says Villemarque, with wonderful _sang-froid_, "duly
attests the prior claim of the Armorican piece!" But even if he had
been serious, he wrote without the possession of data for the precise
fixing of the period in which the Breton ballad was composed; and in
any case his contention cannot assist the Breton argument for
Armorican priority in Arthurian literature, as borrowing in ballad and
folk-tale is much more flagrant than he, writing as he did in 1867,
could ever have guessed--more flagrant even than any adaptation he
himself ever perpetrated!

He adds, however, an antiquarian note to the poem which is of far
greater interest and probably of more value than his supposition. He
alludes to the passage contained in the ballad regarding the harpers
who are represented as playing in the hall of Bran's mother while
she sits at supper. The harp, he states, is no longer popular in
Brittany, and he asks if this was always the case. There can be very
little doubt that in Brittany, as in other Celtic countries--for
example, Wales, Ireland and Scotland--the harp was in ancient times
one of the national instruments. It is strange that it should have
been replaced in that country by the _biniou_, or bagpipe, just as
the _clairschach_, or Highland harp, was replaced by the same
instrument in the Highlands of Scotland.

_Fontenelle_

Guy Eder de Fontenelle, a son of the house of Beaumanoir, was one of
the most famous partisans of the Catholic League, and, according to
one who saw him in 1587, had then begun to show tendencies to the wild
life he was afterward to lead. He was sent as a scholar to Paris to
the College of Boncotest, but in 1589, when about sixteen years of
age, he became impatient of scholastic confinement, sold his books and
his robe, and bought a sword and poignard. Leaving the college, he
took the road to Orleans, with the object of attaching himself to the
army of the Duke of Mayenne, chief of the Catholic party in France,
but, returning to his native Brittany, he placed himself at the head
of the populace, which had risen in arms on behalf of the Leaguers. As
he was of good family and a Breton and displayed an active spirit,
they obeyed him very willingly. Soon he translated his intentions into
action, and commenced to pillage the smaller towns a